


Here Your Love Has Been

by CloudAtlas



Series: A Safety In The End [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Clint Barton, Bisexual Natasha Romanov, Deaf Clint Barton, Developing Relationship, Enthusiastic Consent, Harry Potter References, Masturbation, Multi, Oral Sex, POV Natasha Romanov, Relationship Negotiation, Rimming, Threesome - F/M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9606764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: (970): You can't just say "I scored us a potential threesome" and then not text me back.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Normally I'd blame **geckoholic** for something like this but this one is actually all on me. I just fucking love Clint/Nat/Bucky.  <3
> 
> Still, thanks to gecko for the porn check and the endless enabl-- I mean, encouragement. And also to **inkvoices** for the beta. Title from Heavenly Father by Bon Iver - specifically [this acapella version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAoADCSpD-8), which is just beautiful.

In Natasha’s defence, it isn’t as if she  _planned_  this.

Shield, the large cyber security company that she works for, is hosting a large function-slash-party to celebrate their successful partnership with Stark Industries. It is, Natasha has to admit, worth the party; Shield has been angling to partner with Stark Industries since  _forever_. But it does leave her milling around in a  _very_  expensive dress, having lost the one person she’d actively want to talk to; Stark Industries’ legal wizard Pepper Potts.

It would be better if Clint were with her. But he’d taken one look at the invitation – and yes, it was a fancy enough work party to garner  _physical invitations_  – with its embossed crest on heavy cream card and immediately vetoed his going on the grounds of ‘rich fuckers make me break out in hives’. A  _little_  bit of an exaggeration, but Clint has been known to punch people when they imply that he’s uneducated and unambitious because he never went to some fancy college. So it’s probably for the best. On the other hand, this probably wouldn’t be happening if Clint were here.

Actually, no. This would definitely still be happening if Clint were here.

Because at the very moment Pepper is called away by some important someone-or-other the crowds part, Moses-like, to reveal a  _ridiculously_ attractive guy in a  _stunningly_  beautiful all-black suit, jacket discarded and sleeves rolled up.

He is what a designer would call ‘svelte’; tall and slim made to look taller and slimmer thanks to beautifully tailored trousers. But then, there are a lot of guys here that are tall and slim in beautiful trousers. What makes this guy stand out is the fact that, on top of that, his mouth is gorgeous, his hair silky smooth and his exposed forearms showcase an intricate sleeve tattoo that Natasha sort of really wants to lick.

Natasha throws back her last mouthful of champagne before heading over. Yup, this would definitely still be happening if Clint were here. Hell, he wouldn’t even wait to finish whatever he was drinking.

Briefly, she debates taking a photo to send to him, but she decides against it. Instead she sends off a quick text – [my night is about to get way more interesting] – before aiming for where svelte suit is chatting to a good looking guy in military blues that Natasha also doesn’t recognise. They probably both work for Stark Industries. Maybe this constitutes ‘inappropriate workplace behaviour’? Natasha mentally shrugs. Even if it does, she doesn’t care. Not when the guy has a mouth like that.

Military Blues’ eyes widen slightly as he sees her approach, causing Svelte Suit to turn too and _wow_. Points to Natasha; this guy is  _smoking_.

She feels her clutch vibrate with Clint’s response but she forgoes checking her phone, opting instead to grace both men with a flirty smile. It’s not like she can’t guess what he’s saying.

“Hello, boys.”

Military Blues has regained his composure somewhat and Natasha is impressed with the way his eyes don’t stray from her face as he holds out his hand to shake.

“Colonel James Rhodes, pleased to meet you.”

“Natasha Romanov,” Natasha replies with a smile. “Likewise.”

Rhodes’ grip is strong but not crushing and Natasha immediately decides that she likes the man. In fact, if it wasn’t for Svelte Suit right next to him, she’d be happy to spend the time getting to know him. But Natasha can be shallow when she wants to be and Svelte Suit is  _really attractive_.

She turns her gaze on the man in question. His eyes are the prettiest blue and he’s smirking at her in a way that is very reminiscent of Clint. It’s practically Pavlovian, at this point, how that sort of smirk turns her on.

Svelte Suit doesn’t give his name immediately, instead his eyes travel slowly and deliberately down the entire length of her body before rising to meet hers again. It would be a crass and deeply unattractive move for almost anyone, but with this guy it’s oddly charming, possibly because they’re both very aware that Natasha is doing exactly the same thing to him.

“James Barnes,” he says, his hand lingering in hers longer than necessary. “Can I get you a drink?”

She sees Rhodes roll his eyes.

“They’re free,” Natasha points out, “but sure.”

He gives a disarming smile and, as he turns to grab drinks from a passing waiter, Natasha slyly digs out her phone.

[interesting in a way that can involve me?] Clint has replied which is, yep, exactly what Natasha thought he’d say.

[maybe] she sends back, before dropping her phone back into her clutch in time to accept a flute of champagne from Barnes.

“Oh, you remembered I’m here,” Rhodes snarks as Barnes hands him his own flute. “How nice.”

“Shut up, man,” Barnes says with a smile, shoving him on the shoulder and managing not spill either of their drinks in the process.

They chat about work – Rhodes is there on behalf of an interested military party, but he’s also a friend of Stark Industries CEO, and Barnes works in SI’s R&D department – while Natasha flirts as much as is appropriate at a work function, which is clearly frustrating Barnes no end because Rhodes  _won’t leave_.

It’s sort of funny actually. Barnes clearly wants Rhodes to leave and Rhodes is clearly aware of this so is staying around for as long as he can. Natasha can’t even bring herself to find it annoying; Barnes’ little pissed off frowns are adorable, Rhodes is interesting to talk to, and Natasha enjoys the little conspiratorial smirks he shoots her way when Barnes isn’t looking.

“ – and the implications for overseas security are a nightmare, don’t even get me started – ”

“Rhodey!”

The yell comes from behind Natasha and she only has a moment to brace herself before  _Tony fucking Stark_ , clearly a little worse for drink, barrels into Rhodes talking a mile a minute about how he has to come  _now_  because he has to meet Maria Hill and he’s setting up a meeting on Monday with her and  _c’mon_.

Tony Stark isn’t really what you expect when you think of a CEO of a multimillion dollar corporation.

“Tony,” Rhodes says, longsuffering. “Manners.”

“It’s fine. They know me. I know Barnes. Who are you?”

Tony Stark’s intelligent eyes land on Natasha and she’s surprised to realise that he’s a lot shorter than he appears on TV.

“Natasha Romanov.”

“Aha!” Tony looks delighted. “Pepper mentioned you! You should come too. Monday, with Maria Hill. I’ll call you!”

And he unceremoniously grabs Rhodes by the arm and drags him away.

Natasha turns slightly wide eyes back to Barnes – who she guesses she can now call James seeing as the other James has been all but kidnapped. “Well, that was unexpected.”

“He’s basically always like that.”

“You’re friends with Tony Stark?” Natasha asks.

James shrugs. “I wouldn’t say ‘friends’, I think he only has about four  _friends_. I know him, a little.”

And oh, if that’s not a beautiful opening.

“You wanna know me a little?”

The change in James is almost instantaneous. Hi demeanour shifts from friendly colleague to laser focus in about two seconds flat. It sends a shiver down her spine. It also reminds her of Clint again and it’s weird that that keeps happening. She wonders if this is what is meant by having a type. She hadn’t thought she had one.

She raises an elegant eyebrow and takes a sip of champagne, turning in such a way as to highlight the length of her neck, the redness of her lips, the swell of her breasts. James’ gaze flicks over her, not settling on any one place long enough, always snapping back to her steady gaze and away again. He acts like he wants to be in control, but he behaves like someone who doesn’t. Just the idea of that is heady.

She might not have planned for this, but she sure is planning now.

“Well, doll,” James says, and the slightly old fashioned term of endearment works for him for some reason, “that’s quite a tempting proposal.”

“I try my best,” Natasha replies and James grins wolfishly.

The thing is though, is that she does. Natasha isn’t a natural flirt, not like Clint is. Clint flirts like he was born to it – and it looks like James does too – but Natasha  _practices_. It’s learned, sometimes almost calculated, and she’s worked damn hard to be good at it. In the past, some people have called her manipulative, but Clint admits to finding it fun bordering on incredibly attractive to watch people fall over themselves in the face of (what  _he_  calls) Natasha’s raw sex appeal.

But unfortunately, right now, it’s probably still too early to actually leave this damn work function – they’ve had dinner, but it’s not yet ten – despite the fact that Natasha has found something  _infinitely_  better to do with her time. So, instead of dragging James by the collar into the nearest taxi, she touches her fingertips to his tattooed forearm, following the lines of ink down and around his wrist.

“What’s this?”

“It’s my arm,” James replies, before smirking at her exasperated huff and roll of the eyes. Then; “I was in the army. “One tour of Iraq.”

He proceeds to tell her about the army, the IED that shattered his arm, the reconstructive surgery Stark Industries paid for, the tattoo he decided to get to cover the surgical scars and the friend who designed it for him. And all the while Natasha runs her fingers around the angular designs of what look like interlocking plates, tracing the lines up and down his forearm before touching her fingers, oh so gently, to the scars on his bicep and around his elbow. Scars he has to point out because they’re so cleverly hidden under ink.

But oh, what lovely biceps.

“Did it hurt?” she asks absently. For such an angular design, it’s surprisingly full of movement; the lines flowing together and coming apart in sensual curves before meeting at harsh corners. James’ friend must be very talented.

“What?” James asks, amused, “the IED, the surgery, or the tattoo?”

Natasha briefly considers saying ‘the friend’, just to be annoying, but something in the tone of James’ voice when he was talking about him makes her think that wouldn’t be a good idea. She looks up instead.

James is standing closer than she initially anticipated; close enough that she can feel the heat from his body. He’s leaning against the pillar Natasha had been subtly angling towards since Rhodes left, left hand resting on hers so she can continue to run her fingers up and down his arm. There’s the faintest blush high on his cheekbones and his irises are now just a thin ring of blue around expanded pupils.

In short, he looks fucking incredible. The night to Clint’s day.

“When you fell from heaven,” Natasha says, entirely on a whim. Damn Clint and his bad pickup lines.

James looks confused for a moment before comprehension dawns and he lets out an incredulous, delighted laugh and crumples, his head almost resting on Natasha’s shoulder. His hand slips from hers to rest against her waist and damn, he smells good.

“Jesus darlin’,” he says eventually through intermittent laughter, “you’re somethin’ else.”

She’d thought it before, while talking to James, but when he looks up at her then, all happy eyes and crooked smiles, it hits her all over again.  _Clint would fucking love you._

She gives him a brief calculating look and then makes up her mind.

“Let’s get out of here.”

 

The good thing about this being a work function is that there is no shortage of taxis. The bad thing is that there are about seventeen separate people they each have to say bye to before they can leave – and at least three people Natasha has to avoid based entirely on the fact that those people know she’s in a…  _relationship_  with someone, and probably wouldn’t think highly of her if she was seen leaving with another guy. Explaining, to at least two of them, probably wouldn’t save her the judgement either, so avoidance it is.

But the taxis are prompt, so it only takes them half an hour to find themselves going down Hamilton Avenue, stopping and starting at what feels like every set of lights. Not that Natasha is paying all that much attention because James is kissing her like he had all the time in the world, one hand high on her thigh and the other curled around her jaw.

It’s almost enough to throw all other thoughts out of her head, but Natasha has a plan here and she manages to remember that just as James finds the slit in her skirt.

“Slow down there, soldier,” she pants, drawing her mouth away from his with not a little reluctance. “We’ve got all night.”

“Sure,” James says, voice rough, pausing only to switch to trailing kissing down her neck, “but why not make the most of it?”

“James.”

Natasha’s voice is firmer this time, and she splays her hand out against his chest and  _pushes_. As she expected, the firmer tone of voice works, and he pulls back, lips spit-shiny and gaze hazy and unfocused. The sight alone almost breaks her resolve, but the sudden image of  _Clint_  running his thumb along James’ mouth reminds her of how much better this could be.

“I have a question for you.”

“The answer’s probably yes,” James says flippantly, his hand creeping back up against her thigh.

Natasha grabs him tight enough to feel the tendons in his wrist move. “Don’t say yes when you don’t know what’s being asked.”

The taxi takes a corner a hair too fast and James half falls into her. Natasha shoots the driver a quick look in the rearview mirror but for all his seemingly wild driving he seems focussed on the road. She glances out of the window. They’re nearly there.

“So ask.”

James’ eyes are bouncing between her mouth and her chest so she waits until he meets her eyes again. This is the kind of question she needs his full attention for.

“How do you feel about guys?” she asks and, at James’ look of complete incomprehension, she continues with, “or threesomes?”

“What?”

James looks completely blindsided, mouth open but no words coming out. He glances around the interior of the taxi, eyes skipping over the taxi driver before giving Natasha a questioning look.

Natasha gives him what Clint calls her  _bitch please_  look.

“I – ”

James cuts himself off, clearly at a loss as to what he wants to say. Instead, he sits up, pulling away from Natasha and she immediately misses the heat of his hands.

“What... what are you asking me, here?” he says eventually, as if all he wants is someone to explain this to him in the simplest possible terms. His expression is more complicated than Natasha expected; there’s interest there, for sure, but also wariness and confusion and a painful kind of... hope? Something. Something Natasha thinks is probably very important to James and not at all going to get explained to her now.

“Have you ever slept with a guy?”

There’s an almost involuntary noise from the front of the taxi, and Natasha glances at the rearview just in time to see the driver hastily look away. Well, if nothing else, they’ll have given that guy a good anecdote by the end of the night.

“Yes,” James says, quiet.

“Did you like it?”

Even quieter, “Yes.”

“Would you like to do it again?”

James nods this time.

There’s a silence then, broken only by the honking horn of some car they pass going the other way.

This isn’t quite how it usually goes for Natasha. James is surprisingly difficult to read and she feels as though she’s delicately treading around something she can’t see. Normally it’s easier than this. Normally she offers and the expression on the other person’s face tells her almost everything she needs to know.

In fact, since she’s started doing this – inviting people for threesomes, or to watch, or whatever, which doesn’t actually correlate with how long she’s… been with Clint – she’s become adept at reading the reactions of the people she invites to bed and they can be  _very_  telling. The absolute worst, in her opinion, are those men who seem alright when she talks to them but get that awful look on their face when she says the word ‘threesome’; that one where she can  _see_  the terrible porn ideas zipping through their mind and knows that they all involve either her choking on their dick while they pull on her hair or their smug fucking faces as two girls make out in front of them.

Natasha fucking hates those guys. Luckily though, that seems to be about as far from what’s on James’ mind as possible.  _James_  looks like he’s been offered something close to what he wants, but not quite.

Natasha is starting to really wonder about this friend of his.

(Her favourite, for the record, are either the people whose eyes darken when they see her and then darken  _in exactly the same way_  when they see Clint, or those women who look absolutely delighted at the chance to experiment with another woman safe in the knowledge that there’s a really hot guy there to remind them why they also like dick.)

“Do you have a type?” Natasha asks eventually.

James doesn’t answer for so long Natasha starts talking again, willing to let that one slide.

“Never mind, not everyone – ”

“Kind,” James suddenly says. “But… not too kind.”

“And physically?” she questions gently, after he doesn’t elaborate further.

James’ mouth works for a moment but nothing comes out.

They’re about three blocks from their destination and for once in her life Natasha is thankful for the roadworks lining this stretch of road. Those extra minutes are probably going to be really useful.

“How about a photo?” Natasha asks eventually.

James nods and watches like a hawk as she reaches for her discarded clutch to pull out her phone.

There are a bunch of texts from Clint waiting on her phone when she finally locates it and they’re so  _Clint_ she can’t help but laugh.

[guy or girl?] says the first sent over an hour ago, followed by a string of increasingly irritated texts bemoaning her lack of reply and ending with a frustrated [fucks sake nat you cant tell me youve found a potential threesome and then not text me back]. But she ignores them all, instead searching for an appropriate photo. She has photos of him naked and looking delicious – many of them, in fact. All hidden away in a folder she called ‘tax deductable’ until Clint renamed it ‘to do list’ one day – but in this case she feels something showing Clint being a dork would be more reassuring.

She finds a photo of him laughing his ass off at something and then hands her phone to James, watching his face very carefully.

The change is immediate, his whole demeanour shifting to _want_ until his expression is just as it had been when she’d first made her interest known. He makes a quiet, involuntary sound in the back of his throat and, though Natasha noticed from covert glances at James’ lap that he never lost interest entirely, it sends a small shiver down her spine to see that he’s apparently back in the game.

And Natasha thinks,  _yes_.

“Did someone set you up to this?” James croaks suddenly, turning his attention from the phone in his hand to Natasha, pupils wider than she’s seen so far tonight.

“What?” she says, thrown by the question. “No! Why would you ask that?”

He gives a strangled laugh. “It’s like… someone crept inside my head and then presented to me basically everything I didn’t know I wanted on a plate.”

“Basically everything?”

James looks slightly panicked for a moment. Panicked and sad. “He’s – they. It’s… not an option.”

He. The friend? If so, poor James.

“I’m sorry.”

He licks his lips, the streetlights outside helping to make his mouth look redder and shinier. Christ, but she wants this sorted out so she can go back to having her tongue in his mouth.

“It’s looking up now, though,” he says hoarsely.

The taxi slows to a stop and it takes a moment for Natasha to realise it’s not another set of roadworks, that they’ve arrived, and probably just a little too soon.

“Lady, this is your stop.” The voice of the driver almost cuts through their heated staring match. “That’s $45.”

Natasha takes it back; she hates those roadworks. But then, if James answers in the affirmative, Natasha reckons $45 will be money well spent.

 “Yeah?” Natasha asks, unable to hide the hint of hope in her voice.

 “Yeah,” James breathes.

 

Natasha can tell this wasn’t what James expected. He was probably expecting a walk-up; some reasonably expensive New York condo well within the budget of a high up Shield employee. Not a trendy bar with exposed beams and a gigantic, hand painted sign on the back wall saying ‘we adhere to a strict NO BULLSHIT policy’.

“What – ” James cuts himself off as a group of well-dressed girls briefly separate them as they leave the bar, giggling amongst themselves. “What are we doing here?”

Natasha curls her hand around his jaw and pulls him down so his lips are almost touching hers. He tries to kiss her but she pulls away and he makes an unconscious, cut off whine in the back of his throat, although he doesn’t try again. God, but he takes direction so well.

“Are you listening?” she says, almost directly into his mouth.

“Yes.”

“You can back out of this at any point.” Natasha moves away from him, dropping her hand, to ensure he’s really paying attention to what she’s saying. “Inside this bar is Clint, the hot blond in the photo. This is his bar. We’re going to go inside, we’re going to chat, and, if you’re still up for it after being exposed to Clint’s unique brand of humour, we’re going upstairs.”

“Upstairs in the bar?”

“Upstairs in the building. It’s also Clint’s building.”

James frowns, momentarily distracted. “What does he do?”

“He’s a barman.”

“How – ” he starts before cutting himself off. “Never mind.”

Natasha grins at him. “Don’t worry, I have no idea either. He’s at least assured me it’s not mob related. But his best friend is also loaded, so I’m guessing she’s the answer. You presentable?”

She drags her gaze down his body, noting that at least he’s not tenting the font of his beautiful trousers anymore. Or at least, not in any way that’s  _immediately_  obvious, and the reasonably low lighting will take care of the rest.

“God,” she says, almost to herself. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”

James smirks. “You’re not so bad yourself, darlin’.”

Natasha leans up to give him a  _very_  dirty kiss.

“I see you’ve regained your sass,” she says, panting slightly as they part, their mouths equally slick and bruised. She gives him one not-so-gentle pat on the cheek before quickly digging out her hand mirror to check her makeup and ushering James into the bar’s dim, warm interior.

Clint runs a proper bar, the kind that closes at one in the morning and straight up refuses to even pretend to be a club. To that end, the lighting is reasonable, the chairs are plenty and the music is low – loud music would mess with Clint’s hearing aids anyway. And tonight, Natasha knows, Clint’s shift finishes at midnight, leaving close-up to Kate and Miles. Ostensibly it’s to give him an hour or so to get a head start on reorders and sorting out the stock ready for Saturday, but… well. It can be used for other things as well.

She can’t see Clint behind the bar when they enter, but then she’s a good deal shorter than the average bar goer and the bar is very busy, so that’s not so surprising. She’d ask James to keep an eye out but he’s otherwise engaged with pressing himself flush against her back. She heroically resists the urge to grind back against his dick.

It’s actually Miles that sees them first, probably because they’re better dressed than the average Friday night bar patron, and he waves at Natasha from where he’s pulling pints for a man who’s shirt looks about three sizes too small and not in the good way.

“Hey Nat!” he calls as soon as they’re close enough. “Clint’s upstairs. Simone’s youngest made a bid for freedom again.”

Natasha nods in understanding and inches forward until she reaches the bar. Kate is down the other end and she gives Natasha a quick wave before indicating to them to wait a moment until she’s finished serving the raucous ladies in front of her before she can get Natasha’s drink.

Natasha always gets free drinks here.

“What do you want?”

She pushes back against James, turning to look up at him over her shoulder.

He gives her a heated look.

“To drink,” she clarifies with a smile and roll of her eyes. “Clint is apparently playing childminder so we’ve got a little while.”

James’ brow creases in confusion. “What?”

“Answer the question, then I’ll explain.”

He shrugs, and asks for a whiskey, and Natasha manages to catch Miles’ eye long enough to convey the request before he’s whisked away to serve someone else. The man on the bar stool next to Natasha turns, probably to complain about queue jumping, catches sight of her considerable cleavage and  _gallantly_  offers her his barstool, which she promptly accepts. The man’s face falls when James crowds up behind her again, but Natasha doesn’t care.

“Clint renovated the whole building,” Natasha says, turning so her lips almost brush James’ earlobe. The music isn’t loud enough to necessitate this action, but Natasha does it anyway. “Bar downstairs, apartments above. He rents them out to people he likes and to people who probably wouldn’t be able to afford a place like this otherwise. One of the renters is Simone and her youngest has recently discovered both the dodgy lock on the emergency exit and the back entrance into the bar, so until Clint fixes the door he has to keep an eye out for a little kid in Batman pyjamas crawling around under the tables.”

Kate slides a whiskey and a vodka martini across the bar to where they’re sitting, giving James an approving once over.

“Impeccable taste, as usual,” she says with a smirk and Natasha raises her glass in acknowledgement. James frowns.

“Kate,” Natasha supplies. “Best friend.”

“Knows?”

“Oh yeah,” she says, smirking as she sees Clint emerge from the back room.

“You!” Clint says, playfully pointing a finger at her. “You’re fucking  _mean_  leaving me hanging like that. Getting me all – ”

Natasha can  _see_  the exact moment Clint spots James. His mouth snaps closed, his spine straightens and his eyes darken. And then comes the expression Natasha thinks she loves best; absolute fucking  _joy_  and she can’t help but grin back.

“Jesus fuck, Tash.” It’s said quietly enough that Natasha doesn’t actually hear the words, but she knows exactly what Clint is saying; she knows the shape of that mouth. She knows  _him_.

Natasha feels James’ hand tighten against the fabric of her dress and she turns to catch his expression.

His gaze is roaming over Clint like he doesn’t know what to focus on first. He looks like a deer caught in headlights. A really horny deer.

“Christ, you’re pretty,” Clint says, close enough to lean on the bar, and James makes an involuntary noise in the back of his throat. “And you’re not so bad yourself,” Clint continues, tearing his eyes away from James to send an impossibly fond look in Natasha’s direction. She feels her heart stutter in her chest as he leans over the bar to kiss her and James makes another quiet noise as their lips part.

“So,” says Clint, continuing to lean against, almost on top of, the bar in a way that makes his biceps particularly noticeable, “hi.” He sticks a hand out for James to shake. “I’m Clint.”

“James,” James says, his voice rougher than it was a moment ago.

“Nice tattoo.”

“Your girlfriend liked it.”

Clint has never, as long as she’s known him, refuted that statement and Natasha has never let herself think about what that means.

 “She has good taste.”

Clint gives James an appreciative once over, just in case James hadn’t quite got his meaning.

James shifts beside her and suddenly his dick is pushing against her hip. It’s much more noticeable than before. She pushes back against it and James gasps quietly.

 _I want_ , Clint signs deliberately, his eyes suddenly boring into hers,  _to fuck him while he eats you out._

Natasha lets out a little punched-out gasp – the illicit thrill of Clint saying that in public not at all listening to the part of her that’s pointing out that very few people here will actually know what he said – and James stutters out, “What?” into her ear. Her translation has him shifting harder against her hip.

“I think,” James says lowly, eyes flicking between Natasha and Clint, “I’d be okay with that.”

“You think?” Clint has a mischievous smile and a downright evil glint in his eyes. He pats James’ cheek before pushing away from the bar. “Well, how about you finish your whiskey and decide for sure? I’m going to serve those lovely ladies over there.”

And he ups and leaves for the other end of the bar, flirting easily with a group of women while he makes cocktail after cocktail.

James’ expression is utterly bereft, with a healthy mix of confusion thrown in, and he doesn’t even get halfway through the word ‘what?’ before Natasha cuts in.

“Unique brand of humour, remember?” She takes another sip of her vodka martini and watches Kate and Clint move around each other seamlessly.

“Jesus,” James says, incredulity thick in his tone. He leans slightly against Natasha, as if Clint’s gaze and the spark in the air was the only thing keeping him upright. “It’s like I’ve fallen in with the biggest pair of fucking teases known to man. First there’s you, with your mouth and your cleavage, running your hands up my arm like you’re  _not_  driving me insane, and then there’s your fucking boyfriend looking like he wants to fucking  _devour_  me and then disappearing to flirt with tipsy college girls. And here’s me trying not to cream my pants like a fucking teenager.”

James throws back the remainder of his whiskey in one smooth gulp and Natasha watches the long line of his neck bob as he swallows. He chokes a little and then glares at her like it’s her fault. Natasha grins at him in return.

“Well, we can’t have  _that_ ,” she says, turning on her stool to face him and making sure her knee nudges against the bulge in his pants. “Though…” she presses slightly harder and James moves out of the way.

“These pants cost me too much to let you do that,” he says.

“I know a very good drycleaner. And for the record, he’s not my boyfriend.”

James gives her a sceptical look. “Well, there’s not much about him I’d call ‘boy’, I’ll grant you that.”

“That’s not – ” Natasha starts, but she’s cut off by James’ arched eyebrow and she knows that whatever she was about to say, James wasn’t going to believe her.

“So hey,” and suddenly Clint’s there, round their side of the bar, almost leaning into James but not quite. James’ eyes go wide and Natasha can see a blush climbing up his neck. She’d think Clint was doing something – a hand down the back of James’ pants or something – apart from she knows Clint too well to believe that. Consent first, inappropriate touching after. “You’ve finished your whiskey, does that mean you’ve made a decision?”

“Does that mean you’ll stop being a tease?” James shoots back.

“Not in the slightest,” Clint says, grinning. “But I promise you’ll like it.”

James gives Natasha a long, searching look, turning it on Clint with the same intensity before nodding.

“Uh-uh,” Clint says and finally,  _finally_  his thumb comes up to James’ mouth to press down on his bottom lip. “We use real words here.”

“And what was this?” James makes a handwavey motion, simulating sign language.

“The advanced class,” Clint says with a smile.

 _Does he beg?_  Clint signs to Natasha.  _He looks like he’d beg_.

James sends her a questioning look.

“You want to go upstairs?” Natasha asks, instead of translating.

 _I want him to beg,_  Clint signs.

“Yes,” James answers.

And Clint fucking  _crows_ , like the overgrown man-child that he is, and slides his mouth over James’.

 

Natasha had been planning to come back to Clint’s regardless of how the night panned out, which turns out to be very useful as Clint is far too busy crowding James up against the wall to pay any attention to getting the door open. Not, Natasha has to admit, that that isn’t incredibly distracting. In fact, Natasha slithers her hands into Clint’s front pockets, groping both him and James considerably, before Clint pulls away from James’ mouth long enough to growl out, “You have your own fucking keys.”

His glare is undermined somewhat by James sucking hickeys on his throat and even more so by the sound he makes when Natasha slides her hand into his jeans and her mouth across James’. James’ mouth is so fucking addictive.

She gets them in eventually, though, dragging James by his tie and Clint by his belt loops. She and Clint navigate Clint’s multitudes of discarded shoes with an ease borne of much practice, while James trips over about three different shoes and falls into Clint’s back.

“Your place is a fucking death trap.”

“Little deaths only,” Clint says, paying more attention to pushing Natasha against the wall than anything that’s coming out of his mouth.

“Har har.”

Really, Natasha should be ushering them into Clint’s room – she should be getting them undressed, checking James’ preferences, tempering Clint’s enthusiasm – but Clint finds the slit in her skirt with his unerring accuracy and  _lifts_ , pushing her into the wall and against his erection, and Natasha forgets to care. It’s only when she finally opens her eyes and sees James behind Clint, looking torn between awkwardness and being unreasonably turned on, that she manages to pull Clint away from her cleavage long enough to remind him of their guest.

“Slow down cowboy,” she says, helping in no way whatsoever by rolling her hips. Clint looks kissed stupid when he pulls back from her; eyes hazy and mouth slick and wet, pupils so large his eyes look like black pools. But she sees when her words get through because his eyes become, if possible, even darker.

Clint likes guys. He likes everyone – really and truly not giving a shit about what people deem ‘conventional beauty’ – but she knows his favourites are women who won’t be told what to do and men who will. And James watches them both like he’s just  _waiting_  for instruction.

“James,” Natasha says, and over Clint’s shoulder she sees him practically snap to attention. “Up the stairs.” She points in their direction over Clint’s shoulder. “Take off your jacket, shoes and socks and sit on the bed. Anything you don’t want to lose put in the bowl on the dresser.”

Clint gets a little exited sometimes and there have been times where they’ve had to turn his room upside down the next morning in search of people’s keys or credit cards which have been flung unceremoniously across the room when he gets too impatient for skin under his hands. To be honest, it’s one of Natasha’s favourite things about him, but it’s still a little irritating. People don’t mind loosing socks or underwear. They’re slightly more upset about phones, credit cards and house keys. The bowl was her solution.

James nods and spares them one last glance before heading through the kitchen area and up the stairs.

Both Clint and Natasha stare at the way his beautifully tailored trousers cling to his ass as he retreats.

Clint groans low in the back of his throat.

“Holy fuck, Tash,” he says and she laughs lowly at his pole-axed expression.

“Ten points to Slytherin,” she replies smugly, pushing against his chest to give her enough room to move away.

“Ten?” Clint says incredulously. “More like five fucking hundred.”

“Gonna win the House Cup.”

“Gonna fucking  _give_ you the House Cup, Jesus.”

“Ready?”

Natasha brings her hands up and Clint mirrors her.

“One, two, three.”

Natasha is fairly sure that Rock Paper Scissors is not how normal people decide how threesomes are going to go, but it works for them. You win, you get to be in charge – and Clint picks scissors every time, so Natasha can rig the game however she wants.

Natasha picks paper. Clint would probably cry if he didn’t get a chance to boss James around.

“Remember, cowboy,” she says, closing her paper hand over his scissor fingers. “It’s his first time.”

Clint nods and the look of absolute joy is slowly steeling back over his expression. On a whim, Natasha leans in and kisses him chastely on the mouth, a quick press that somehow fills her up to the tips of her eyelashes, and the expression she gets in return hurts somewhere in her chest.

She tries not to think about it.

James is sitting against the headboard of Clint’s bed, jacket off and shoes lined up neatly against the wardrobe door. He looks ready to vibrate out of his skin and his gaze flicks between Clint and Natasha like he’s not sure who he should be paying attention to more. Like he doesn’t know who he  _wants_  to pay attention to more.

He hasn’t even switched on the light. Natasha can’t decide what’s more likely, that it’s because he wasn’t told to, or because he got distracted by the enormous skylights that take up the majority of the ceiling.

James shifts slightly as they approach, opening and closing his mouth like he wants to say something but isn’t sure what. His lips are spit shiny, catching the ambient glow of the light pollution from outside. He looks fucking delicious. Five hundred points to Slytherin indeed.

“You okay?” Clint asks quietly, sitting on the end of the bed.

Natasha flicks on a table lamp as James nods, before rearranging her skirt enough to sit behind Clint, close enough that she can feel the heat of him through the front of her dress. Clint immediately leans back against her and then with a devilish smirk, first at James and then over his shoulder to her, he brings his legs up onto the bed, stretching them out to rest his calves across James’ thighs, bracketing his waist with his feet.

“Still okay?” he asks, and Natasha can hear the laughter in his voice; the joy.

“Yeah,” James says, hoarse, and he lifts his hands, tentative, before placing them down, one on each shin.

“Ground rules,” Natasha says, wrapping an arm around Clint’s chest and rubbing idly, catching her thumbnail on his nipple intermittently. Clint’s breath hitches but he doesn’t look away from James; their eyes locked.

“You say stop, we stop. Either of us say stop, we stop. You need time, you say so. You don’t like something, you say so. You want something, you say so.”

 _Use your words_ , Clint signs, because he’s a dick. James glares at him.

“Use your words,” Natasha repeat-translates with a smile, wrapping her hand around Clint’s long enough to still them before walking her fingers down his front and into his jeans. “Is there anything you particularly like or dislike that we should know about now?”

James licks his lips, tearing his gaze away from Clint’s to meet her eyes. “Like having my mouth used,” he says, and Clint hisses in appreciation. “Don’t like blindfolds. Toys – ” His breath hitches and he looks like he’s going to continue but Natasha cuts him off.

“First time gets you pegging only,” she says gently, because toy preferences are not something they need yet. Baby steps and all that jazz, “and not today because Clint is in charge.”

She palms Clint through his underwear, flicking the button of his jeans open, and he groans.

“Doesn’t look like it,” James rasps and Clint presses his heel into the front of his pants at that. James hisses.

“It never does,” she replies, kissing Clint on the juncture of his shoulder and neck. That gets her a mock glare.

This random kissing is new, she notes distantly. She decides not to think about that either. Instead, she pats Clint on his lower stomach, the only warning he gets before she moves away to stand up. He leans back on his hands and tips his head backwards to meet her eyes. His look says  _get the fuck undressed_  in amongst a lot of other things Natasha mostly ignores. He then turns back to James, sitting up and forward, question in every line of his body. They’re both almost vibrating now, the air charged. Natasha feels like she could push back against it, or that she could drown in it.

James nods once and Clint surges forwards, tangling his hands in James’ hair as James’ hands grip the back of his t-shirt. Night and day, just like she’d thought. Clint’s black t-shirt a contrast to James’ white dress shirt; Clint’s blonde hair to James’ black; Clint’s tanned bare arm to James’ tattooed one. It’s nothing like Clint and Sam together but oh, it’s just as beautiful.

Natasha debates watching them undress – and idly she wonders if James’ can sew because he’s definitely going to lose buttons by the end of this – but eventually decides multitasking is better and keeps half an eye on them as she removes the pins from her hair, takes off her necklace and, with one easy pull, unzips her dress to pool at her feet, revealing her lace panties and bare breasts. It’s a move that would provoke admiring looks in any other situation – cinematic, like the curtains at a theatre opening for the main event – but they’ve forgotten about her, in this moment, and instead she looks up from the pooled dark blue material in time to see Clint lean back and pull off his t-shirt in a way that maximises efficiency over seduction and therefore pushes every single one of her buttons.

Clint is shirtless now; jeans unbuttoned and leaning over James, who seems unwilling to loose contact with Clint to remove his own shirt further. They might have forgotten about her for a moment, but it’s easy to remind them; her sudden weight on the bed causing James to tear his mouth from Clint’s with a slick sound and groan as he catches sight of her.

She can imagine Clint’s wolfish grin without seeing it.

“Fucking gorgeous, ain’t she?” Clint says.

James nods, looking stunned, and Clint’s gaze flicks over her before he leans in and says, direct into James’ ear and close enough for his breath to send shivers over his skin, “You can touch.”

Natasha approves of the fact that James’ eyes flick to hers in question regardless, before he reaches out.

She kneels closer, pushing up against Clint’s side, trapping James’ left leg between their bodies. She’s not sure when it happened, but James’ legs are practically wrapped around Clint, and his hands are warm as they skim up her ribs to gently cup her breasts and thumb her nipples. Clint turns, leaning his head on James’ shoulder, kissing his way up and down his neck, and Natasha has to fight to remain upright, her whole body over-sensitised. No matter what impression she might give, this doesn’t actually happen all that often. She’s forgotten just how amazing this can be.

“C’mon,” Clint says into James’ neck, “shirt off.”

Together they gently strip James of his shirt and, while they’re at it, divest him of his underwear and beautiful trousers. Natasha’s not too sure where his tie has gone, which is a shame. She’d quite like to see him tied to the headboard with it.

“Fuck,” James whispers, pulling her closer again, hands on her breasts. “I – ”

But he doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Natasha wraps a hand around his – truly beautiful – dick and strokes, and James fucking  _keens_ , hands tightening on her breasts and causing her to hiss through her teeth.

There’s a soft _wump_ to their left and Natasha looks over to find Clint has thrown his jeans over the side of the bed – or more accurately almost through the mezzanine railing and down into the kitchen – and she doesn’t ever get tired of seeing him naked. Occasionally she thinks he picked the lighting in this room to be as flattering to him as possible, but he’s not that narcissistic. Regardless, he looks almost like he’s been brushed with gold and sometimes when she touches him she can almost believe that the colour has rubbed off on her hands. That she’ll leave gold handprints on the sheets, on the bed posts, on the walls.

Not that she’s ever going to tell him that. He’s smug enough about this apartment as it is.

“Fucking gorgeous,” Clint mutters, leaning over to first kiss her on the mouth and then James. James follows as he pulls away, as if magnetised, reaching for Clint’s hips. He looks like he wants to say about a million different things but the only word that finally makes it past his lips is, “Please.”

Clint looks fucking delighted and Natasha can’t help but grin back at him.

“Please what, James?”

“Wanna suck you,” James says, low, mouth almost touching Clint’s but not quite.

“Yeah?” Clint breathes out, and Natasha settles against the headboard, finally removing her underwear because this is going to be _good_ , watching Clint tease.

“Yeah,” James replies, and he thinks he’s got his way; he’s reaching for Clint, skimming his hands down his waist, aiming for his dick. But Clint grabs his wrist with one hand, his chin with the other, presses his thumb against James’ lower lip, and leans so close they’re practically kissing.

“Beg me.”

And James inhales sharply as Clint moves away; letting him go completely, not touching him anywhere, moving so he’s sat between James and Natasha against the headboard. Fucking _spreading his legs_. And James scrambles, turns, follows with his body, eyes huge and dark and desperate. Natasha can see when he clocks her sat there too, _finally_ sees her again after being tunnel-visioned on Clint. Sees Clint’s hand on her thigh, her bent knee, her fingers working between her legs. It stops him for a moment and there’s a flash of indecision, like he’s now not sure what to beg _for_ , but it goes again.

Natasha can come more times a night than Clint after all. She’ll get her turn.

“Please,” James says, hovering above Clint and that should be a powerful position, Clint should look small and overcome, but rather he looks like a conquering prince and _shit_ , Natasha feels that hit her just right, her belly tightening. She runs a hand up her stomach, her breasts, pinches a nipple, rolling it between thumb and forefinger, whining low in the back of her throat. Clint’s hand tightens on her thigh and she’s _gone_ , a staticky fizz buzzing under her skin and her cunt tightening around her fingers and _shit_. Shit, shit, shit.

When she zones back in James is staring at her like he’s not sure what he’s just seen. Mouth a red, wet ‘o’ and then it’s like something breaks and he’s up in Clint’s face, hands roaming over his chest and shoulders, muttering, “Please, please, please. I’ll make it so good. I’ll be so good, wanna suck you so bad. Please, sir.”

Clint’s hand shoots out at that, grabbing James’ chin again and shaking a little.

“Don’t call me sir,” he says, low and dangerous and damn, Natasha should have warned James about that. But it’s fine, it’s alright, because James just nods, his ‘please’s now interspersed with ‘sorry’ and ‘Clint’ and kisses until Clint relents with a, “Christ, you beg so pretty.”

To which James breathes out, “Thank you,” and, in one fluid motion, ducks down and swallows Clint whole.

Clint almost lifts off the fucking bed, a bitten off shout muffled by Natasha's lips because she can’t _not_ taste that; the surprise and the want and the warm salt-slick taste of everywhere James has been tonight. It’s fucking stunning and she fights to get more until Clint nudges her away, wanting to _see_.

And oh, what a sight.

James’ mouth is stretched wide around Clint, wet and red, his eyes blown wide and trying hard to stay fixed on Clint, but they flutter shut every time Clint makes an aborted roll of his hips and Natasha can _see_ what the little punched out sounds James is making do to Clint, how his chest hitches and his hands clench. She shoves two fingers back into her cunt. She’s oversensitive and it makes her keen into Clint’s shoulder but she can’t _not_. She wants Clint to touch her, wants _anyone_ to touch her, but James is going to town on Clint like he’s starving and Clint looks almost out of his mind, so she makes do with her hands and sliding her mouth over any part of Clint that’s within reach. His shoulder, his neck, the wet corners of his mouth, panting and whining until he takes notice – hazily, lethargically – and wraps an arm around her waist enough to pinch and pull at her nipples.

And she’s fucking _gone_ ; a blank-white-out stronger than the last time, digging her teeth into Clint’s shoulder enough to leave a mark and with wetness coating her fingers. And she’s not sure if it’s that – the teeth marks on his skin – or the wet fingers she places low on his abdomen to steady herself, or if it’s something James does with his teeth and tongue and clever hands but Clint follows soon after, panting, “Fuck, fuck, fuck” into the air and scrabbling at her waist one-handed.

James pulls off Clint with an obscene, wet _pop_ and flops, seemingly sapped of strength, against Clint’s thigh. Natasha can see his arm, snaking down between himself and the bed, and the motion that says he’s getting himself off as quickly as he possibly can. The thought _Clint won’t like that_ is only half way to being formed before Clint’s foot nudges James’ arm and he grunts out, “Nuh-uh, not until I say,” between shuddering breaths.

James whines, but he does as he’s told.

He turns on his side, probably to prevent his dick from rubbing against the mattress, and as soon as she sees it, fat and angry and almost purple-red, she wants it inside her. Wants to be stretched so perfectly on that fucking gorgeous dick. And normally, she’d do just that – shuffle down the bed, push James onto his back and _ride him_ – but tonight. Tonight, Clint’s in charge and she loves pushing him, has always loved pushing him, has always loved that he lets her push him, but tonight everything is his call because _she’s_ letting _him_. Because he’s been so good to her for so long, letting her take change whenever she wants, and his sunshine-smile at getting things his way makes parts of her light up that she didn’t even know she had.

That thought has her running her fingertips over her slit again, up and around her clit. Has her hips twitching. Not enough to get her anywhere, but enough to pool heat throughout the pan of her hips.

“Fuck,” Clint breathes out eventually. “Fucking Christ, your _mouth_. Ten points to – ”

And then he stops, cuts himself off, looks down at where James is staring at Natasha's hand between her legs – and oh yes, she wants him to look, to want, to want to do something about it. Clint’s not the only one who wants to tease James beyond his ability to cope.

“What House are you in?” Clint asks, frowning down at James.

“What?” James tears his eyes from Natasha's fingers to look up.

“Hogwarts House; which one are you?”

And that’s such a mid-sex-Clint-Barton question that Natasha has to laugh, has to press a kiss to his shoulder. Clint strokes his hand down her side, warm and steady despite the mind blowing orgasm, and Natasha thinks that maybe, just maybe, she could lo–

“Oh,” James says, looking briefly puzzled before clearly just deciding to roll with it. “Gryffindor, I guess.”

“Ten points to Gryffindor, then.”

“Pfft,” James replies, swatting Clint’s thigh. “That was at least a twenty point blowjob.”

“No arguing,” he replies. “Hufflepuff’s in charge.”

“No one puts Hufflepuffs in charge.”

“How very dare you,” Clint mock gasps, clutching a hand to his chest melodramatically before dropping it to James’ mouth and pressing his thumb to his bottom lip again.

“Not that it matters though,” he continues while pushing his thumb into James’ mouth, “Slytherin is winning the House Cup this time.”

“Why?” James mumbles around Clint’s thumb.

“Because,” and here Clint drops a kiss onto Natasha's head and she feels it to her toes, “Slytherin brought me this really fucking hot guy with a beautiful mouth and talented tongue. And it turns out _he_ is willing to argue about Hogwarts Houses mid-sex. Therefore: winning.”

“Five hundred points,” Natasha says hazily and James’ eyes snap to hers, his cheeks hollowed, and she groans at the sight.

“Jesus,” she says, forcing her body to move. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

She peels herself away from Clint’s side with unsteady limbs, until she’s half leaning, half sitting over Clint hips, close enough for her to remove his thumb from James’ mouth and replace it with her lips, kissing him wet and deep. He tastes like Clint, warm and hot and desperate, and he scrabbles at her shoulder, raking blunt nails over her skin in search of purchase. His hips roll, dick angry looking, the tip wet and _oh_ –

Natasha tears herself away from James’ mouth to send Clint a pleading look over her shoulder.

Clint smirks at her from where he’s almost collapsed against the pillows, a thin sheen of sweat covering his chest and his dick lying limp against his thigh. James didn’t clean him up and she so wants to put her mouth on him, lick and suck until Clint is writhing, so oversensitive that he’s reduced to incoherent noises and clenched fists. Until he’s hard again.

But right now, she wants James inside her more and Clint knows this.

 _Use your words,_ he signs to her because he’s a shit. Because he knows she doesn’t beg and loves it when he can make her regardless.

Happiness radiates off him in waves, like heat, and it catches in the back of Natasha's throat, hooks into the soft parts of her, makes her _want_. But before she can slide her fingers into herself, James’ has unpeeled his sticky fingers from Clint’s knees and is pressing them between her thighs, blunt and clever and just right.

She gasps, slamming her eyes shut against the sensation, her arms a slow collapse and her legs spreading automatically, her whole body tipping back until she’s sprawled inelegantly against Clint’s side, her head at an awkward angle by Clint’s side. And when she finally manages to open her eyes again, hazy and unfocused with pleasure, Clint’s gaze is so dark it seems to absorb the light, absorb her, absorb _them_ – her and James, who’s pulled himself up her body to slide his mouth down her neck and suck bruises onto her collar bones. Who doesn’t even _know_ that he’s being swallowed up, taken in and folded up so completely into someone else’s need and want and unabashed joy.

She’s almost paralysed by it.

“Please,” she breathes out and Clint just smirks wider – at her poor attempt at begging, at the noises James is coaxing from her, at the whole spectacle they make – and signs again. _Proper words, darlin’_.

She can fucking _hear_ the dropped ‘g’, even when he’s signing.

“Please,” she says again, firmer, despite James’ best efforts at making her lose coherency. “Touch me.” She gasps as James demonstrates exactly how he’s _already doing that_ but, _God_ , it’s not enough. “Let him fuck me. _Something_ , you dick.”

Clint laughs, delighted, and reaches over to drag her closer against him, kissing her hard and dirty and like he wants to take her over, before manhandling her between his legs, her back against his chest. It pulls her away from James’ fingers, causing them both to whine at the loss, and Natasha already misses the feeling of having them inside her, stretching her better than her own can. James almost gets kneed in the head by both of them as they rearrange limbs and he grumbles as he moves out of the way, resolutely not touching his dick despite the obvious effort it costs him. He _does_ stick his Natasha-coated fingers into his mouth though and the action makes all three of them groan.

From behind her, she feels Clint lean over to the closest bedside drawer and pull out a condom, before pulling back and hooking his feet under her ankles. He sweeps his hands up her sides to cup her breasts and squeeze, the foil of the condom wrapper digging into her, adding a bright point of pleasure-pain that makes her gasp.

“You’re gonna ask,” Clint says, directly into her neck. “Yeah?”

Natasha gasps in answer and they’ve been doing this together for long enough for Clint to take it for the consent it is.

“Hey, James,” he says and when James is looking back at them, fingers still in his mouth, he continues, “Natasha has something she wants to ask you.”

And then, because Clint should never be allowed to be in charge _ever_ , he spreads his legs, taking hers with him and opening her up to James’ hungry gaze.

Natasha’s chest is heaving, breath coming in shallow pants due to anticipation and Clint’s hands on her tits, pulling and twisting her nipples with just enough force to hurt just right. She’s fucking _dripping_ – so wet she can feel it slipping down her slit, so wet she can feel where it’s drying tacky on her thighs – and she needs James inside her fucking _now_ or she’s going to kill someone.

She fumbles for the condom Clint’s still holding, and when she’s got it she flings it so that it bounces off James’ chest and snarls, “Fuck me.”

James slams his eyes shut and grips the base of his dick, a dark red flush spreading further down his neck and chest than Natasha’s ever seen on anyone. His breathing is erratic and laboured, but he doesn’t come.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Clint says, faux-admonishing but with laughter evident in his tone.

“I’m not very nice,” she replies, impatient. “C’mon, Barnes.”

“Aw darlin’,” Clint’s tone is so full of happiness. “You’re delightful. Sunshine and rainbows.”

“Shut up, Clint,” she replies, his name becoming breathy and indecipherable as he pinches her nipple again. She feels Clint shrug against her.

“Okay,” he says, turning her head with his other hand on her jaw and sliding his mouth back over hers, stopping her gasps with his tongue.

 _Technically_ , he did what she’d asked.

Clint puts everything into his kisses, being a firm believer in kissing as more than just a means to an end, and Natasha gets so lost in them, in the way Clint’s arms hold her, firm but not tight – _safe_ – that it takes James’ breath on her collarbone for her to realise that he’s moved, that he’s close enough to touch and taste and _be inside_ her. He’s not touching her yet though, instead hovering just above them both, the strain from holding back evident in the taut tendons of his wrists, the deep flush gracing his skin, the tightness around his eyes.

“I’m not gonna be able to – ” he starts, low and urgent, but Clint interrupts him by curling a hand around the back of his head and pulling him in for a kiss over Natasha's shoulder. James loses his balance and pitches forward onto her and she’s trapped, Clint behind and James in front, the sound of them kissing only inches from her ear.

It’s overwhelming and she wasn’t sure what her hands were doing _before_ but they’re sliding between hers and James’ bodies _now_ ; inching towards her cunt and sinking in, scissoring and curling up and making her keen. She’s sure, in that small part of her brain that can still process coherent thought, that Clint’s going to pull them away, admonish her for taking James’ job, but when he finally moves it’s only to slide his fingers in alongside hers, stretching her wider unexpectedly and making her cry out.

“Don’t worry,” he says to James, hoarse and right in her ear, the words punctuated by the slick sound of the two of them still kissing. “I can’t last when I’m inside Tasha either.”

James and Clint part with the slickest, dirtiest sound imaginable and Clint shifts beneath her, pushing them slightly further down the bed in preparation; his rapidly hardening cock sliding against the cleft of her ass and James’ knees briefly brushing against her inner thighs. It can’t be particularly comfortable for him, this position, but he brought it upon himself, so Natasha can’t find it in her to care.

James kisses her before he pulls himself off Natasha to pluck the condom wrapper out of the ruined bedsheets and roll it onto his dick with as little touching as possible. He pauses for a moment, probably to get himself back under control, and then leans forward again, placing a kiss to Natasha's hipbone, her naval, her sternum, her mouth. Then Clint’s mouth.

“You two,” he pants, gently pulling both hers and Clint’s fingers from inside her, “are probably,” – he lines himself up – “the most beautiful people I have ever seen naked in my life.”

There’s something Natasha can’t parse in his eyes, as his gaze lifts to meet hers, something unendingly grateful that she doesn’t understand, but then James pushes into her in one long, smooth thrust and she forgets to care, forgets anything that isn’t this glorious, stretching heat. Her breath punches out and she jerks, feeling rather than hearing Clint’s corresponding grunt as she shifts more violently than he was expecting.

Natasha's eyes slam shut and all she can hear is James and Clint muttering ‘fuck’ on loop, low and harsh. All she can feel is the stretch of James inside her, the weight of James above her, the solidity of Clint behind her. Then what she assumes are Clint’s hands on her, one on her tits and one on her jaw, turning her head until he can slide his lips over her slack mouth. And Clint’s voice cuts out, leaving James’ curses to spiral around her mingled with the wet slap of skin on skin and her own harsh pants.

James is still inside her, just a beat. To allow her to adjust or to help him control himself, she’s not sure, but it’s probably a good idea either way because he’s not the only one too close to the edge. Between the two of them, they’ve got her nearly losing her mind. And in that brief, still moment, she registers the fact that it’s a little odd, this closeness.

One night stands are fun, no emotions stronger than lust and need and want, but this is different. Clint’s happiness is almost a physical thing and Natasha is unsuccessfully pushing away many things she’s been fighting for ages, like a dam has burst. And James, James seems to be made of nothing _but_ emotions she only half understands.

This shouldn’t be different to the handful of times she and Clint have done this before. But Natasha gets this sudden feeling – here, sandwiched between a guy she hardly knows and a guy she knows better than she’d allowed herself to realise – that this time it’s different. That maybe Pepper abandoning her at a Shield function was one of the most important things to happen to her in ages. The most important thing since that time Sharon took her to a bar in Brooklyn with a stupid Shakespeare-inspired name and an adherence to a ‘strict NO BULLSHIT policy’.

But then she stops thinking, because James thrusts once, twice, hard and unforgiving and _so good_ , and Clint’s hands slides between their bodies to press unerringly against her clit, and Natasha unravels, gasping and crying out and floating into infinity.

 

Natasha comes back to herself slowly. It’s not that she blacked out, nothing so cliché, but it takes a while for her to register anything other than the pleasure-buzz caught under her skin. The first thing she notices is the soft kisses Clint is pressing along her neck and shoulders, the smooth glide of his hands up and down her sides.

The second thing she notices is James, collapsed on top of her and all but clinging to them both, panting huge damp breaths over the tops of her breasts.

“Shit, Tash,” Clint gasps in between kisses. “Shit.”

He shifts as if he wants to roll them onto their sides and Natasha paws ineffectually at James until he slides out of her and shifts enough to let them. She then pulls at him again until he’s resting higher on the bed, high enough for Natasha to kiss him easily, sliding her tongue into his mouth and digging her fingers into his back.

Natasha feels Clint reach over her and she opens her eyes just in time to see him run his hand through James’ hair.

“Fuck that was hot,” he says, brushing gentle fingers against James’ cheekbones, and Natasha closes her eyes again because he’s too close and it hurts her eyes trying to focus on the way Clint trails his fingers across James’ face.

“So hot,” he breathes out again and she feels his fingers on her own face then, moving across her nose and cheek before sliding over where hers and James’ lips meet.

“Can I still fuck you, James?”

Clint’s comment startles simultaneous groans from both of them and Natasha reaches down to squeeze James ass, sliding her index fingers _just_ between his ass-cheeks.

“I don’t think I have the energy to eat Natasha out while you do it,” he replies and Natasha _knows_ that Clint notices that isn’t exactly a yes.

Natasha feels Clint sit up behind her.

“Hey,” he murmurs, reaching over her to grasp James’ shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“I am so alright,” James replies, but he doesn’t look at either of them.

“No, you’re not,” Clint says gently.

James’ laugh is slightly hysterical as he rolls out of Natasha's arms and onto his back.

“No,” he concedes. “I’m not.”

“You want to stop?” Natasha asks, because you should never, ever assume.

James looks over at them, at Natasha lying naked on her side and Clint sat behind her with a hand on her waist. She knows that’s what he sees because she can feel Clint behind her, but she doesn’t know what he _sees_ when he looks at them there. She doesn’t really know what she sees when _she_ looks at _him_. What’s lying in front of her is a beautiful man with a sleeve tattoo, on his back on the bed of her lover and still wearing a condom that was inside her just moments ago, but what she _sees_ … She glances at Clint and thinks he might have realised the same thing.

Natasha is beginning to suspect that what she sees is a man in love with someone he can’t have, who has accepted an offer he didn’t fully think through, and who has realised something that’s tilted his world sideways.

“I think,” James says slowly, “I want you to fuck me until I can’t think. I think I want to kiss Natasha until it hurts.”

Natasha turns just far enough for Clint to slide into her field of vision, so she can see the effect James’ words are having on him. So she can see his dick, pearling at the slit, which she could feel stiffening again while James fucked her and which she knows he would have straight up ignored if James said he wanted to stop. Even in the dim light of the room, Natasha can see his pupils gradually swallow his irises once again as he slowly reaches for James – mostly to touch, Natasha thinks, but also probably to remove the condom.

“But,” James continues and Clint freezes, withdraws his hand while Natasha's gaze snaps back to James’ face. “Don’t expect much participation from me.” And for a split second Natasha's worried, but then a slow smiles spreads over James’ face. “I wasn’t lying about being too tired to eat Natasha out.”

“Natasha's okay with that,” she reassures him and to be honest she’s not sure she could cope with it herself. She feels wrung out, almost too tired to move. Clint has freakish amounts of energy where sex is involved and normally Natasha can keep up, but today she’s come three times, been fucked once,  had three sets of fingers inside her – including her own – and been kissed within an inch of her life. She’s just as happy to watch Clint fuck James into the mattress as she is with anything else.

“I’m not going to be gentle,” Clint warns and Natasha knows he’s offering one last out.

“I don’t want you to be,” James replies, quiet but sounding utterly sure of himself.

Clint growls, “Good,” in response and reaches over to peel the used condom off James dick, tying it off and flinging it across the room to land in the bin with an unappetising noise that has Natasha grimacing. At least she can be safe in the knowledge that Clint never misses shots like that, so there’s going to be no unpleasant surprises for her when she gets up tomorrow morning. Or is it technically this morning now? She has no idea anymore.

She’s pulled from this not-at-all interesting train of thought by Clint, who unceremoniously manhandles her onto her back and into the middle of the bed, kissing her hard on the mouth and sliding his hand in between her legs. She yelps, hand shooting out to grab at his wrist and pull his hand away from her incredibly oversensitive cunt, glaring at him as she does.

Clint just grins at her, unrepentant.

He then grabs James, pulling him up and over so he’s lying across her, chest to chest with his face practically mashed into her tits. Clint runs his hand along James’ jaw, turning his face to kiss him, wet and dirty before shooting her a sly grin. Before she can stop him or even register his intent, distracted as she is by his _fucking_ smirk, he shifts enough to bite her nipple – probably because it’s _right there_ but also because he’s a little shit – before moving away again, pressing kisses down the length of James’ back until he’s hovering over James’ ass.

“I gotta warn you,” Clint says smugly as he pushes James’ right leg up for better access, “I’m very good at this.”

Clint might be bragging but he’s also _not lying,_ so Natasha decides to be nice and help by hooking her ankle around James thigh to hold him.

The first touch of Clint’s tongue to James’ hole has him tensing up so fast Natasha's honestly worried he’s going to shatter. Then Clint starts in earnest and James is swearing and shuddering in her arms, his hands clutching at her sides almost to the point of pain. He doesn’t even try to stretch to reach her mouth. Instead hot, ragged breaths spill out over her tits, tightening her nipples, and James clutches at her shoulders, muttering a mixture of expletives and their names in a constant litany that sounds almost reverent. His eyes are screwed so tight, his mouth so wet and red, and he looks like he’s lost; completely given over to sensation.

Natasha's sure surrender has ever looked so good.

And Clint just _keeps going_ ; eats James out like it’s his one true mission in life and Natasha knows exactly now that feels – how overwhelming it is – and Clint can fucking tell she’s thinking it because every now and again he sends her these conspiratorial, mischievous looks while pulling away to say things like ‘holy fuck James’ and ‘so fucking loose’ and push his fingers into James’ hole. The man’s a fucking menace and, while she’s far from ready to go again, the sight in front of her is ensuring that she’s caught in low level arousal, almost like being suspended in warm water. Seemingly endless, sustained pleasure heightened intermittently by James’ mouth catching on the skin on her breasts, not enough to be called a kiss but enough to cause her hips to stutter, just a little.

Clint sends her a look that means _condom, please_ and Natasha only just manages to reach the dresser drawer without shifting James off her front. He whines, low and out of breath, at the movement and she can’t help but run her hand through his hair

“You’re doing so good,” she says, distractedly throwing the condom at Clint. “So good. So beautiful.”

She tilts his head up, just enough so she can press kisses to his slack mouth and it’s so addictive she misses Clint sitting up and rolling the condom over his straining cock. Is so caught up in how James tastes and the blissed out expression on his face she only really registers what’s happening when Clint gently eases her foot away from James’ thigh so he can pull at the other man’s hips.

Clint pushing in causes James to keen, blunt nails raking down Natasha's sides, and _god_ , she knows what that feels like too and her cunt tightens around nothing in sympathy.

“ _Fuck_ , so tight.”

The act of Clint repositioning James has caused Natasha to slide down the bed slightly. She’s low enough that it would take very little manoeuvring to slip James’ dick into her still sensitive cunt; to have Clint fuck her through James. But she’s not even sure if James is hard – can’t see from here – and while she could probably reach around, she’s enjoying running her hands through his hair, slipping her fingers into his mouth and tweaking her nipples with spit slick fingers.

Clint is relentless, his thrusts smooth and even, hips snapping hard enough to make slapping sounds as he connects with the back of James’ thighs. James looks out of his mind with pleasure while Clint looks as though he’s fighting not to come, like it’s so overwhelming, and he’s worked himself up so much eating James out that he’s too close to the edge.

“ _Tash_.”

Clint’s voice is quiet and strained. He’s a chatty and outgoing guy, loud, but during sex he’s all quiet focus. It’s one of the things they have in common and it seems that James is the same; preferring heartfelt ‘fuck’s to loud moans. But one of the things Clint does that Natasha has never quite got used to is saying her name, soft and reverent, when he’s close.

James is whimpering, soft and muffled by the skin of her breasts, and Clint is saying ‘Tash’ like all he needs if for her to say it’s alright to come and he will.

Maybe James is right, maybe Hufflepuffs are never really in charge.

“Tasha,” Clint says this time, almost reverently, and she looks up to find him staring at her, so focussed and intense that it causes her breath to catch and her cunt to clench. She feels swallowed whole again, like she could fall into him, and distantly she knows that there’s something here, something that wasn’t here with Sam, or Matt, or even Alexei, something that’s just Clint. It’s not quite as scary as she thought it would be.

She’s self-aware enough to admit that it’s still fucking scary though.

She sees Clint’s arm move, let go of James’ hip to disappear between his legs, and although she can’t see what he’s doing, she can guess. Confirmation comes when suddenly James keens again, high and quickly cut off, and his aborted ‘please’ spills out over her tits just as Clint says exactly the same thing.

Clint says, “Tash,” at the end though.

Natasha nods, eyes wide, and Clint’s expression washes with gratitude before his eyes slip shut.

She sees his arm twist again and James convulses, moaning long and drawn out and dragging Clint over the edge with him, the two of them gasping and clawing at skin, James raising red lines down Natasha's sides. It’s a slow collapse; the last of James’ strength leaving him heavy on Natasha's chest while Clint’s arms slowly give way, leaving him sprawled like a dead weight across James’ back. It’s almost too much, their combined weights crushing her, but mostly Natasha feels safe; grounded and content and _held_.

Looks like none of them can last all that long tonight.

The ensuing silence is broken only by their laboured breathing, harsh pants syncopating as heartrates slow. Then Clint pulls out, causing both him and James to moan weakly, and shakily removes the condom, once again flinging it at the bin where it lands with an equally unpleasant noise before he pitches sideways to lie next to Natasha, his head parallel to her hip. He kisses her absentmindedly, tangling his fingers with James’, and Natasha can’t help but drop a kiss onto each of their foreheads, running a hand through their sweat-soaked hair.

“Я думаю, что люблю тебя.”

She has to push the words out, even though Clint doesn’t know what she’s just said.

Natasha’s not one for declarations of love but if she doesn’t say _something_ she thinks her heart might explode in her chest. Which is ridiculous, she knows, but it doesn’t make it feel less real. And it’s fine, because Clint largely ignores her when she speaks Russian – he doesn’t understand it but trusts her not to keep secrets from him – which is useful because it’s her test language. If she can say it in Russian first, she can work up to saying it in English.

So Clint ignores her, just kissing her on the hip again because he’s a sap. But James, James drags his gaze up to hers, quizzical, before flicking it over to where Clint is lying content at her side, and Natasha has the sudden, horrible thought that James _understands_. She holds her breath, trying not to be too obvious in her apprehension, but he doesn’t say anything, just slides his hand up her side to trace aimless patterns on the underside of her breast, and Natasha lets it go. He probably didn’t understand then; how many Americans bother to learn Russian? Not many.

The three of them lie there for some time, not saying anything, just enjoying the moment. It’s only when Clint makes that odd snuffling sound that indicates he’s ready to fall asleep that Natasha realises that it’s up to her to make sure they’re in a position to do so without waking up stuck together unpleasantly tomorrow morning.

“C’mon,” she says as she tips James into Clint’s arms, “let me up.”

Out of the two of them, Clint is definitely better at the emotional aftercare and she watches with fondness as he comes back to himself, waking up enough to smooth his hands down James’ side and whisper comforting words into his ear.

The bed’s a disaster and Natasha briefly debates if she should get the guys to move off it long enough to change the sheets before deciding against it. It looks like no one came directly on the sheets – the second time, James mostly came on _her_ , which is simultaneously kind of hot and kind of disgusting – so it’ll do until tomorrow. Her legs are shaky and she takes a moment to catalogue all the places she aches before gingerly making her way to Clint’s en suite in search of a damp cloth.

Her clean-up is perfunctory at best; she’s too exhausted for it to be anything else. She wipes herself down in the en suite before returning to the bedroom to drop damp cloth on Clint’s chest. They can look after themselves. She then drags the comforter back onto the bed and cracks a window to help the thick smell of sex dissipate.

“Big spoon or little spoon?” she hears Clint ask James as she flicks the beside lamp off and while she doesn’t hear the answer, when she slides in between cool sheets she finds herself settling into James’ embrace.

“This is the most fucking insane thing I’ve ever done in my life,” James mumbles into the darkness.

“We’re all mad here,” Clint replies and she just has to slap his shoulder for that. Only Clint would quote _Alice in Wonderland_ after sex.

“You don’t regret it, do you?” Natasha asks after a moment.

James pulls her close enough that she can feel where Clint’s arms are wrapped around his waist. It’s not a comfortable position and they won’t actually be able to sleep like this, but it’s nice for now.

“Not even a little bit,” James responds after a brief silence and Natasha smiles into the darkness.

 

Natasha wakes to find she’s mashed her face into Clint’s shoulder.

She squints through bleary eyes, cataloguing all the aches in her body and all the places she’s pressed up against someone else. There’s an arm slung across her back and a foot pressed up against her ankle.

This is not how she fell asleep.

Natasha frowns momentarily before realisation kicks in. Clint’s done it again. As soon as she’d noticed it, she’d sworn that she’d keep an eye out for it and he’s done it again and she’s now firmly off kilter.

See, eighty five percent of the time, after sex, Clint forgets to take out his hearing aids and Natasha forgets to remind him. So Clint falls asleep with his BTEs in and, while they’re small and relatively discrete, they press uncomfortably against the side of his head if he lies on them. This means, usually about two hours after falling asleep, Clint will be woken by them digging into his skull. At the same time, Clint’s body will remind him that a) he needs to pee and b) he hasn’t brushed his teeth before bed – something he hates, which Natasha finds hilarious considering how much of a slob he can be about some things – so he gets up, goes to the loo, brushes his teeth, and takes out his hearing aids before climbing back into bed.

And that’s fine, that’s completely fine. But, on those occasions they’ve invited someone else to join them, Clint does something slightly unexpected. If he falls asleep next to the third person after sex he’ll always, always, _always_ climb back into bed beside Natasha.

Always.

And he’s done it again.

That, added to everything that happened yesterday, makes part of Natasha want to go home to her place and bash her head against a wall.

The larger part of her wants to fall back asleep wrapped in two very attractive guys. But her body is liking neither of these options, instead pointing out to her the overwhelming need to pee and the fact that she fell asleep in a sex-bed _again_ and is tacky and smelly in a way she really doesn’t appreciate right now.

So she’s going to get up and shower. Any time now.

Clint’s lying on his front, arms tucked up under the pillow. It highlights the muscles in his shoulders and the line of his spine. The blinds in his room are pretty decent, but it’s a mezzanine so there’s plenty of ambient light to go around and she can see the topography of his back in beautiful detail. She stares at it, fighting the urge to just run her hands over his skin, and then groans as quietly as she can manage before easing herself out from under James’ arm and gingerly climbing over Clint and out of the bed.

James grumbles at the loss and unconsciously shifts until he’s pressed up against Clint before settling again. His hair’s a disaster; the type of artful sex-hair models kill for.

Jesus, but they’re both so fucking pretty.

Natasha shakes herself and picks her way towards the en suite, almost tripping on James’ discarded dress pants.

One of the best things about Clint’s place is the bathroom. “Kitchens and bathrooms are what’s important,” he’d once said to her. “Everywhere else you fill with furniture, but those ones you fucking  _plan_.”

First impressions of his apartment lead people to believe it’s his bedroom that he’s spent the most time on and that isn’t such a stupid assumption; after all, he knocked through the building’s roof just so he could get a mezzanine bedroom with skylights. But in reality, it’s the kitchen and bathrooms that really knock it out of the park. He has a  _rain showerhead_. Having a shower at Clint’s borders on a religious experience. Add to that the fact that it’s light and airy and cleaner than you’d expect from someone who frequently drinks coffee straight from the pot, meaning that Natasha always makes sure to indulge any time she’s over. Her own shower is now a perpetual disappointment.

She takes her time. She might as well. The water pressure is delicious and she knows for a fact that Clint can and frequently does sleep ‘til noon when he can get away with it. And James had looked like he was practically planning to _hibernate_ ; she’s got tons of time.

Which means, of course, that when she gets out of the bathroom wrapped in a short purple silk robe she has _no idea_ why Clint owns, it’s to find Clint and James unhurriedly making out in bed.

“Oh sure,” she grouches playfully, “start without me why don’t you.”

“Hey, if you’d stayed – ” Clint starts, but Natasha cuts him off.

“You’d still be asleep.”

Clint shrugs unapologetically. “Not my fault you left me alone with such a pretty guy. What did you expect?”

She’s all geared up to shoot something playful back, but she just shrugs instead. “Eh, true I guess. We made out for practically the entire ride to the bar.”

“Not true,” James cuts in. He turns to Clint. “The driver nearly fucking crashed when she said ‘threesome’.”

“Total exaggeration,” Natasha retorts, idly kicking James’ clothes into a pile. _Not_ the way you should treat such a beautiful suit but whatever. Definitely worth it.

“Really not,” James shoots back, turning onto his back to stretch. The covers slide down his abs and she _sees_ Clint lick his lips.

“James thought I meant the _driver_ when I said threesome.”

Clint laughs in delight as James turns red. “Well, what was I supposed to think?”

“That I could do better than a schlubby guy who drives taxis for a living?”

James opens his mouth and then closes it again. Clint grins wider and pats him on the cheek. “Don’t worry man, I couldn’t think when she brought up threesomes either.”

“Hey, _you_ brought up threesomes!”

Clint turns on the bed so he’s looking at her. “No I didn’t, that was you.”

“No,” Natasha says patiently, picking up her crumpled dress from the floor and flinging it over the mezzanine railing before sitting down at the foot of the bed. “I brought it up in a general discussion of likes and dislikes, _you_ actually made it happen. Remember Misty?”

Clint’s eye glaze slightly and he grins. “Aw, man. Yeah. She was fucking epic. Oh my god, did I tell you?” He sits up, all bright eyes and excited smile. “Guess who walked into Slings & Arrows with her fucking _girlfriend_ two days ago?”

Natasha quirks her eyebrow in question.

“Carol!”

Natasha laughs. “Seriously?”

“Yeah! She’s cut her hair, has this great faux hawk now, looks fucking _bangin’_ and then there’s this girl behind her, all long dark hair and sarcastic eyes, looking like Katie’s older, angrier sister and Carol goes, ‘Hey, Clint. This is Jess, my girlfriend’.”

Clint looks delighted, bless him. “So hey, ten points to Hufflepuff. I told you she was using us to experiment.” He’s absolutely not bothered by the idea.

“Huh.”

James looks understandably confused, so Clint takes it upon himself to explain.

“Carol was this woman we slept with – what, like, two years ago, Nat?”

Natasha nods.

“Yeah, something like that. And I totally figured she was finding the best way to experiment with girls because the first time she slept with us she kept looking at me for direction and Nat like she was a magical pixie and the second time she straight up fucking ignored me.”

“She did not,” Natasha cut in. Carol was much more attentive than that.

Clint shrugged. “Okay, so not, like, _ignored_ , but she was definitely paying more attention to you than me. Not that I blame her.” He grins at her then and it hits her somewhere in the gut.

“So you do this often?” James asks, waving his tattooed arm to encompass the three of them.

“You’re, like, the – ” Clint scrunches up his face “ – fifth?”

“Sixth,” she corrects, sliding her hand over Clint’s ankle bone because it’s _right there_.

“Who’s number six?

“Misty,” Natasha counts off on her fingers. “Carol, Malcolm, Sam, Darcy. And then James.”

“Oh.” Clint draws the sound out so it has about five syllables. “Malcolm. God, how did I forget him? Fuck.”

“And these were…?” James trails off with raised eyebrows, like the question is really obvious.

“What?”

He looks uncomfortable then. “Well, you said you slept with this Carol twice. Were they all like that or…?”

“Oh.” Realisation hits and Natasha shrugs. “Sam was pretty steady for about six months, before he was posted back to DC. Everyone else was basically a one night stand.”

“Misty wasn’t though. She was _NYPD_ ,” he says, leaning over conspiratorially and holding his hands out as if to be cuffed. James starts laughing.

“God,” he says, grinning from where he’s sprawled out on the bed. “You guys are insane.”

He stares at them a while longer and slowly the smile drops off his face until he looks serious and slightly sad.

“God,” he says again, rubbing a hand over his face. “Shower?”

“Yeah, sure,” Clint says, happy to roll with James’ abrupt change of subject. He waves behind him. “Towels in the cupboard, borrow whatever you want.”

“What about you?”

“There’s a shower downstairs too,” Natasha says. “Don’t worry.”

 

Natasha hangs her dress up as the guys head off to their respective showers and then strips the bed before following Clint downstairs to put the washing machine and coffee on. Pancakes will probably happen, but not by her. Clint might live on take out most of the time, but it’s only because he’s too lazy to plan meals around his work (and because the kitchens at Slings & Arrows keep him in left-overs most days). Of the two of them, he is definitely the most kitchen-savvy, which is also definitely the most surprising thing Natasha knows about him. Practically everyone who meets Clint assumes he’s a disaster in one form or another. And they’re basically right, just, it’s not in cooking. Or home renovation. Or sex.

In fact, it’s mostly in the way of being an obnoxious asshole who tells bad jokes, drinks coffee out of the pot, and is spectacularly bad at talking about his own feelings despite being fantastic at talking to other people about theirs. Clint’s a fucking conundrum that way. He also tends to trip over things and walk into things a lot. And he once fell out of bed during sex, which is downright the funniest thing to ever happen to Natasha.

Anyway, the point is, if people want pancakes, they have to wait until Clint is out of the shower. Natasha _could_ make some, but she doesn’t want to. Natasha never wants to cook. Everything she makes is perfectly adequate but she finds the whole process boring. Clint enjoys it, despite making a fucking mess, and tends to always produce something fantastic at the end of it, so she leaves the whole thing to him.

“Pancakes?”

But maybe _James_ is a pancake savant.

She turns to find him standing in his dress pants and nothing else, his hair a damp mess on his head. Natasha gives him an appreciative once-over and he shrugs.

“I couldn’t find my shirt.”

Natasha frowns and then walks around the kitchen island, finding James’ shirt caught on one of the kitchen stools. It’s missing at least three buttons.

“How the hell did it end up there?”

Natasha gestures to the mezzanine that ends just level with the kitchen island. “There’s a reason I told you to put valuables in the bowl,” she says. “Clint gets excited. His jeans are down there too.”

“Huh.” James reaches for his shirt but Natasha pulls it out of his reach.

“Nuh-uh,” she says. “I’m rather enjoying the view.”

James rolls his eyes.

“Pancakes?” he asks again.

“If you want.” She gestures to the cupboards before hopping up to sit on the kitchen island. “Everything should be there.”

James is halfway through making a stack of pancakes worthy of the morning after a threesome when Clint gets out of the downstairs shower dressed in the rattiest pair of sweatpants he owns. 

“You should really get rid of those,” she says as soon as she notices.

The elastic is so loose that Natasha always worries that _moving too fast_ will end up with the whole thing around his ankles and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing on its own, Clint would probably manage to fall over and hurt himself at the same time and she feels that, at least, should be avoided. If only to save herself from the hours of complaining that’s sure to ensue.

“What,” Clint replies, all faux-innocence, “now?”

Natasha rolls her eyes as James snorts. “No, not _now_ , you idiot, but before they inevitably kill you.”

“Death by sweatpants,” Clint muses. “Admittedly, not the sexiest way to go. Hey! Pancakes!”

James shrugs and the play of muscles under skin is _very_ distracting. “Seemed like the least I could do.”

“Dunno man,” Clint replies, attempting to steal a pancake off the stack and getting whacked on the back of the hand for his troubles, “having you beg me last night was probably thanks enough.”

Clint’s grinning, leaning against the counter next to where James is working, the picture of casual sex appeal and while Natasha can’t see James’ face, she’d bet good money that he’s blushing _hard_ , if only because the back of his neck has taken on a pretty appealing shade of pink. And then he turns just enough to lock eyes with Clint. Natasha can only see a sliver of his profile but _damn_.

It’s not like she’d known him long enough to do something cliché like forget he’s really attractive, but she _had_ managed to temporarily forget that utterly intoxicating look that occasionally graces James’ face. The one that tries to say he wants to be in control, but is actually saying he wants to be taken over. It’s not even _aimed_ at her and she can feel her stomach tighten.

And of course Clint just grins wider.

“Christ,” he says, softly, and once again his hand comes up so he can press his thumb into James’ bottom lip. “You’re just so fucking pretty.”

James makes a strangled sound, trapped somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “You’re one to talk,” he says, and his voice is deeper than it was, rougher. He looks behind him, catching her eye. “Both of you.” There’s a beat of silence and then, “I can’t – ”

He stops abruptly, his eyes cutting away, and there’s another beat of silence before he turns back to the stove and the pancakes, forcing Clint to drop his hand.

Clint shoots her a confused look and she hesitates for a moment, wondering if this crosses some unseen and unspoken boundary. Then she shrugs, a small thing, and signs, _There’s a friend, I think._

Clint will know what she means.

The expression that flickers across Clint’s face is full of understanding touched with sadness and he stands up straighter, no longer slouching, to drop a kiss onto James’ shoulder.

“Sorry,” he says, “didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

James exhales loudly. “Nah,” he says eventually. “I’m making me uncomfortable. Don’t worry.”

He flips the last of the pancakes onto the stack and casts around rather helplessly for the plates. He looks so adorably confused, like he didn’t just find them when searching for the flour, that Natasha decides to take pity on him and lay the table while Clint rummages around in the fridge, pulling out various toppings with inarticulate triumphant sounds.

“These are fucking amazing,” Clint mumbles around an over-large mouthful of pancake, once they’ve got themselves organised and ready to eat. “Oh my God, you can come back whenever you like.”

“They’re just pancakes,” James demurs.

Natasha snorts and rolls her eyes. “Not the part of the sentence you should be paying attention to, Barnes,” she says before she properly registers what she’s saying.

James’ head rabbits up and he stares at her, wide eyed, and Natasha thinks, _shit._

“Seriously?” Clint waves a fork at him, apparently unperturbed that he’s gone _wildly off script_. “You’re just fishing for compliments now. Did you miss the part where we had great sex? Because _I_ didn’t and – ”

Natasha smacks him on the arm.

“What he’s trying to say,” she says, cutting him off quickly, “is that the bar downstairs is called Slings & Arrows, if you hadn’t caught that yet, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. Clint is almost always behind the bar and I’m almost always around. If you want something like this to happen again, all you have to do is turn up and say so. And even if you don’t want it, pop in and say hi anyway.”

She can see Clint gearing up to say something stupid again, so drops her hand to his thigh and digs her nails in _hard._ This is absolutely not how this usually goes and he needs to _shut up_. Thankfully, he snaps his mouth shut.

“Either way,” she continues carefully, “we’ll be happy to see you.”

James nods, his expression still unsure, and for a moment Natasha is at a loss as to how to steer this back onto territory she understands. She shoves some food into her mouth to give herself a moment to think.

“But he’s not lying,” Natasha says eventually. “These are amazing pancakes.”

“I put cinnamon in the batter,” James says quietly and Natasha can’t help but smile at that.

Carefully, she steers the conversations towards safer topics, asking James about cooking and inconsequential things until he relaxes again. And, to be honest, until she relaxes again. Clint has never explicitly invited someone back in this way – not even Sam, who was a good friend before the ‘with benefits’ part was added. Everyone else either did or didn’t eventually drift back into Slings & Arrows and they went from there. Clint has even told her once that that was one of the major perks of living above his own bar; everyone knew where to find him. She figured James would be the same and can’t quite work out what it is that’s made Clint deviate from their usual morning after routine.

It takes a moment to realise that the only other time she _knows_ he’s done that – explicitly invite someone back – was with her, four years ago. The realisation makes her stop mid-chew, arrests her movement so completely that her fork is stuck halfway to her mouth.

Why would he do that? Why with James? _Why now_? They know James as well as they’ve known anyone they’ve invited to sleep with them. What makes him special? He’s hot, sure – Natasha's both _not blind_ and well aware that _she picked him_. Natasha frowns at her plate. She picked Darcy, too. In fact, now that she thinks about it, she’s not sure that Clint’s slept with anyone she hasn’t picked or suggested since… Sam maybe? And that was two years ago. There was that cute skinny guy and that girl with the afro and the pierced nose, but other than that, as far as she’s aware, the only person he’s slept with is…

Her. And people _she’s_ suggested. Or – or given implicit permission for him to sleep with.

Natasha swallows and carefully puts her fork down.

But _she_. She’s slept with a bunch of people. A couple he’s pointed out to her but most of them she picked too.

What if… but no, that would be stupid.

Would it? Would it be stupid that Clint doesn’t sleep with people unless she suggests it? And would he suggest James come back in the hope that she’d realise this?

Actually, yes. He would totally do that because he’s terrible at his own feelings. Something she’s beginning to suspect she has in common with him more than she previously suspected. Because the idea that he’s slept with very few people who weren’t her since Sam went back to DC is actually making her stomach do alarming squishy things she’d rather ignore.

Apart from she can’t, because Clint might actually want something more from this than they have and she’s… surprisingly okay with that.

Apart from she also does want James to come back.

Shit.

“Tash?” Clint’s voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. “Tash, are you okay?”

Clint has his hand on her wrist and James is looking at her with concern, and she has to make a concentrated effort to focus back on them rather than her rapidly swirling thoughts.

“Yeah,” she says vaguely. Then stronger, “Yes, sorry. Thinking.”

“Too early for thinking, darlin’,” Clint replies with a smile, but he still looks worried and Natasha can _feel_ James’ gaze bouncing between the two of them, trying to work out what’s going on.

Natasha forces out a laugh. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Then, just because she would actually like to know what the time is, she leans over to see the time displayed on the screen of Clint’s phone – his _landline_ phone, because for some inexplicable reason, Clint still has a landline.

This time though, the laugh she lets out is genuine.

“Oh God,” she says, smiling back at the two men still stuffing their faces with pancakes and syrup. “It’s not early at all. It’s nearly twelve.”

“What?” James says, clearly alarmed.

“It’s eleven forty five,” Natasha explains.

“Shit!” James pushes himself away from the counter and makes a grab for his shirt, which Natasha had left draped over the end of the stairs. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“What?” Clint turns on his stool to watch as James hastily does up his buttons.

“I’m supposed to me meeting a friend at half twelve for dinner in fucking Manhattan and I absolutely cannot turn up in last night’s clothes and I _do not_ live around here.”

Clint’s eyes widen. “Shit. Okay – where do you live?”

“Queens.”

“The fuck d’you live in Queens for?”

“Oh God, not you too,” James snipes as he rushes up the stairs to collect the rest of his clothes.

“What d’you mean ‘not you too’?” Clint demands, yelling so James can hear him. “Also, do you want to just borrow some of my clothes?”

James’ head appears over the mezzanine railing. “Seriously?”

Clint shrugs. “More sensible than borrowing Natasha's.”

James rolls his eyes and disappears again, but not before yelling. “A friend lives in Red Hook. Complains all the time about how I’m abandoning Brooklyn.”

“Borrow some clothes!” Clint yells back. “Queens is literally the opposite direction to Manhattan. You’ll never get there and back here again in time, let alone to Manhattan.”

“I’m not going through your wardrobe!” James replies, indignant.

“Oh for fucks sake,” Clint grumbles to himself before getting up and following James up the stairs, presumably to throw clothes at him until James relents and lets Clint have his way.

Natasha stares after them for a moment before deciding she might as well do something useful while they play dress-up and tidy away the plates. She’s just putting the syrup and flour away when she hears the guys come back down the stairs. She turns to find Clint looking quietly pleased and James wearing Clint’s dark grey Henley and a pair of his jeans. He looks good enough to eat.

“On a scale from one to a hundred, how obvious will it be to your friend that these aren’t your clothes?” Natasha asks with a tiny smirk.

“Provided she doesn’t look below my waist, I think I’ll be okay.”

“Not a jeans kind of guy?” Clint asks.

“Not these kinds of jeans, that’s for sure,” he replies, slinging his suit jacket over his shoulder.

“It’s so unfair,” Clint whines. “You’re just effortlessly fucking gorgeous. Urgh.” He digs around in one of the boxes under his stairs, completely missing the smile James tries to hide, and comes out with a tote bag that says FEMINIST BADASS on it. “Here, shove the rest of your stuff in there. Don’t lose the bag though, else Kate’ll kill me.”

James runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up alarmingly. “Okay,” he says mostly to himself, heading towards the door. Both she and Clint follow him, each leaning on opposite walls as James pulls on his dress shoes. Yeah, as long as his friend doesn’t look below the waist, it shouldn’t be obvious that these aren’t his clothes. No self-respecting man would wear those shoes with those jeans unless they had to.

Natasha straightens his lapels – not because they need it, just because she really wants to touch – and says, “You look great,” before opening the door for him.

James hesitates before leaving, his eyes flicking between Clint’s and her own. She steps up to lean against the doorframe and she can feel Clint move to prop his arm up behind her.

“Thanks,” James says eventually. He makes an aborted movement, like he was going to reach out his hand to shake or something, before clearly changing his mind and darting forward to kiss each of them, in turn, on the cheek. “I’ll… I’ll bring your stuff back as soon as I can.”

“Whenever you can,” Clint says easily.

James pauses again, opening his mouth as if to say something but nothing comes out. His indecision is sort of cute and Natasha can’t help but smile, leaning more heavily into the doorframe. She feels her head brush up against Clint’s bicep.

“Natasha?” James says eventually. He looks nervous, like he’s not sure he should do what he’s about to do, and Natasha is at a loss to think what could have caused it. She smiles at him reassuringly, nodding to show he should continue.

“Ты должна сказать ему.”

 _You should tell him_.

Natasha tenses up so quickly it _hurts_.

“Tash?” Clint says quietly.

Now James is looking directly at her and he doesn’t look away.

“Seriously,” he says, quiet but firm. He then nods once, turns on his heel, and heads off towards the stairwell, not looking back once.

Natasha stares after him, unseeing.

He knew, he’d _understood_. He’d understood and…

“Tash.” Clint gently takes her hands and steers her inside again, quietly closing the door behind them. “Hey, are you alright? What did he say?”

She looks up at him then, runs her gaze over where his hair is washed soft from the shower, at the fact that he’s still without a shirt, terrible sweatpants still slung low on his hips. She looks at where his hands are cradling hers, so gently. He’s so good to her.

 _You should tell him_. And this time, it’s not James’ voice that says it.

She swallows, shifts from foot to foot, holds his hands back.

Takes a breath.

Well, here goes nothing.


End file.
